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Why Is Google Even Involved In The Yahoo! Acquisition Talks?

October 24, 2011 by Pat McCarthy View Comments
'YAHOO in 2001.' photo (c) 2007, gaku. - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

There’s been numerous news reports about Google considering “buying” Yahoo!, or at least teaming up with private equity companies to do so.

While most of the articles at least mention in passing that it’d be unlikely for this to pass government review, I haven’t seen many people actually discuss why Google is involved.

Why wouldn’t a Google acquisition of Yahoo! pass government review? Well, if the Department of Justice wouldn’t pass the search deal that Google and Yahoo! worked up in 2008 where SOME of Yahoo!’s search results were powered by Google, then why would they actually let Google take part in buying all of Yahoo!?

In fact, many thought that Google knew in 2008 it wouldn’t pass government review, but tried to do the deal just so Yahoo! would turn down Microsoft and waste a lot of Yahoo!’s internal time (and it worked). I sat in many meetings at Yahoo! that were spent talking about the tests we were running with Google and how we were going to implement the deal.

There hasn’t been enough change in search market share for anyone to seriously even think it could pass. I’m not entirely sure if Google being only part of an ownership group with private equity firms would change the government’s view, but I doubt it.

Which leaves us asking, why is anyone even taking Google’s interest seriously?

I can’t answer why anyone is taking Google seriously, besides the fact that they are one of the only players who actually have the cash to do something around Yahoo!.

'Red flags' photo (c) 2004, Rutger van Waveren - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/It just seems like any major involvement on there part is going to just raise big red flags with the governments of the world and will never pass “go”.

Why would Google get involved then?

I feel like there are two obvious answers to this one.

  1. Google can pretend to at least have interest in Yahoo! to draw out how quickly something happens here. The more time Yahoo! is in limbo, and the more time Microsoft spends figuring out what to do about it, the better that is for Google to continue to separate itself from them.
  2. Google can go as far as even floating prices out there to try and get others (Microsoft) to feel like they have to pay more in order to get Yahoo!. The more money someone spends on Yahoo!, the better that is for Google.

I suppose it is possible that Google really does want to keep Yahoo! out of Microsoft’s hands, but it seems like Microsoft having to acquire and digest Yahoo! would just allow Google to accelerate ahead even further ahead. It’s all just a ruse to waste time by complicating matters and drive up the price. Well played Google.

Filed Under: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo

Google Plus Rapid Growth: Will It Last?

August 1, 2011 by Pat McCarthy View Comments

Google Plus growth screenshotThe above graph was created by Leon Haland and featured on Techcrunch Europe.

The tech media has been all over the rapid growth of Google’s social network Google Plus. Many have assumed that this rapid rise means that Google Plus is on it’s way to be a serious competitor Facebook and Twitter.

After my usage of Google Plus so far both sharing and reading, it’s definitely a solid product that does some things better and some things worse than other social tools.

However, I’ve yet to feel like it’s on it’s way to truly competing with Facebook or Twitter.

I think the graph above has been caused by the following:

  • Familiarity with Social Networking - A larger number of people are now familiar with social networking than when Facebook and Twitter launched. They also have more friends and are more connected making it easier to hear about a new social network and decide to go try it out.

  • A Desire For An Alternative - While Facebook and Twitter are massively used, there are a large number of users who don’t love them as products themselves and have the desire for an alternative. Google Plus is really the first serious alternative to launch.

  • Google “Install” Base - So many people already have Google accounts and use Gmail, that it made it super easy to explose Google Plus to users as well as make it easy to intelligently recommend Gmail contacts to invite.

Will Google Plus Keep Growing?

Google Plus was reviewed well by the tech media, and it feels pretty good as a product. However, after a few weeks now I’ve got over a 100 people in my “circles” but the only activity I’m seeing is from about 5-10 people who all have jobs as part of the tech media.

There is literally NO activity from most of my normal friends, many of whom are on the cutting edge of technology and are heavy social network users.

Why is this? I’ve asked a few of them, and the answers tend to be that they don’t know why they should use Google Plus instead of Facebook or Twitter. Their friends aren’t fully there yet, they don’t really feel the need to organize them into circles, and Facebook and Twitter just do a good enough job.

Google’s going to need to do something to differentiate Google Plus even more from those competitors and do something SIGNIFICANTLY better than the competition in order to get people to spend more time there.

It’s definitely possible, but it’s a tough task that won’t be as easy as the initial spike of growth in the graph above.

Filed Under: Facebook, Google, Twitter

Google’s Computerized Car Debate

October 11, 2010 by Pat McCarthy View Comments

By some futurist predictions from the past, we’d all be flying around in our cars by 2010. While that’s obviously not the case, Google announced this week that they have developed computerized cars that have logged over 140,000 miles on public roads. While this by itself is pretty cool and amazing, it sparked a bit of debate among tech blogs about how and if Google should be spending time on projects that seem far away from their core mission.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Google

Google’s New Click to Call Ads Reminds Me Of Onion Video

May 20, 2010 by Pat McCarthy View Comments

Google just announced their new Click to Call ads. Which seem to really make me think about this recent hilarious video created by The Onion. The 911 call using the Google phone is fantastic stuff.


New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users’ Ears

Filed Under: Google

Did Google Buy AdMob for Ads, Data, or Both?

November 10, 2009 by Pat McCarthy View Comments

One of the biggest acquisitions in the advertising and technology space over the past couple of years occurred this week Google recently purchased AdMob for $750 million in stock.

There has been considerable speculation about why Google not only purchased Admob, but spent so much money in doing so. The obvious off the cuff answer is to get their hooks into the mobile display advertising space by acquiring the most well-known mobile ad network. Some people such as Niki Scevak don’t think that’s a particularly good idea, and others such as Silicon Alley Insider seemed to have to work a bit to justify it.
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Filed Under: Acquisitions, Advertising, Google

Google Laying Off Thousands of Temp Workers?

January 8, 2009 by Pat McCarthy View Comments

Apparently Google has gotten rid of thousands of temporary workers according to the Associated Press based on documents filed to the SEC. I can’t say this is terribly surprising based on layoffs at my own employer and elsewhere in the tech industry.
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Filed Under: Google

Battle of the Advertising Superpowers: Who’s Got What?

June 18, 2007 by Pat McCarthy View Comments

adpowers.jpgIt’s been a crazy couple of months. Not only did my employer agree to be acquired by Yahoo!, but our competitive landscape has changed dramatically with Google acquiring Doubleclick, Microsoft acquiring aQuantive, WPP acquiring 24/7 RealMedia and AOL acquiring AdTech AG to go along with what they already own in Advertising.com.

Additionally, there are still some other large players who are also in the game such as News Corp./Myspace/Strategic Data Corp, and IAC/Ask.com.

Obviously this is a big land grab for these large companies, combined with trying to get innovative companies who are pushing things forward in online advertising. The Wall St. Journal talks about the ad exchange concept and how it relates to these acquisitions.

The media and blogs have been covering these stories quite a bit, but I’ve seen a lot of writers and commenters really not having a great gasp on what pieces of the advertising business each company has now, how they all stack up, and what it all means going forward. So, I’ll try and help out.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Advertising, Google, Microsoft, Right Media, Yahoo

Google and Dell Border on Spyware

May 23, 2007 by Pat McCarthy View Comments

As mentioned in my previous post, I just bought a new Dell desktop. One of the things I immediately noticed was the behavior outlined in this blog post about Google and Dell “hijacking” browser address bar type-ins to go to advertising-heavy pages.

Don’t get me wrong, I am an advocate of advertising on the web, but what I didn’t like was that I in the few minutes I spent trying to investigate this on my own machine I didn’t figure out how to turn it off. I primarily use Firefox anyway so I figured I wouldn’t have to deal with it anyway. However, I’ve noticed that even though Firefox thinks it’s my default browser (as I selected it should be) various other applications on my computer keep launching IE7 when they launch web pages.

While I think it’s okay for Google and Dell to work together on providing search results with some advertising, what they’re doing here is pretty offensive with the page above the fold being entirely ads and the difficulty of removing the behavior from your system.

Filed Under: Google

Google Showing Less Ads in Search Results, but Why?

March 22, 2007 by Pat McCarthy View Comments

Robert Scoble posted today about his observation about Google putting fewer ads on their search results, and how a Google employee confirmed this and said internal research showed that in the short term this costs them revenue, but in the long term it helps revenue because users trust the ads more and it leads to more clicks and buying behavior.

First, I think we have to ask if we believe this is true. I’d guess that Google would not make such a move without being very confident that it was going to eventually lead to more revenue. As a public company, it’s even risky to hurt short term results in this manner, so I’m betting it doesn’t even hurt their short term revenue results that much.

Scoble then theorizes that the purpose of this is also related to their Pay-Per-Action program:

Anyway, Google is doing that to make way for its new “pay per action” advertising type (announced yesterday). This is brilliant. Advertisers are going to LOVE this. Imagine I ran a print shop, like PrintingForLess. Now I could tie my advertising onto actually getting a sale, or getting a good lead. You see why Google needed more relevant advertising before turning this on. They want only potential buyers to see an ad. Anything else is noise. Noise reduces buying behavior.

Well, something doesn’t jive here because according to Google the Pay-Per-Action ads are only going to appear on their Adsense content network:

Pay-per-action ads are eligible to appear on publisher sites in the Google content network, and publishers can choose specific pay-per-action ads that are relevant to their site to run in new ad units that they create.

So, for at least right now, Google is not putting PPA ads in their search results, which is the area that Scoble is talking about. So either Scoble is incorrect in his theory, or his Google contact gave him information that points to it being likely that PPA ads will be showing up on Google search results soon.

Filed Under: Advertising, Google

Jumping to Conclusions on Google’s Pay-Per-Action

March 20, 2007 by Pat McCarthy View Comments

There are lots of bloggers talking about Google’s launch of their Pay-Per-Action (beta) program which is really just adding CPA ad units to Adsense with a name to not associate it with CPA directly.

My first reaction is that people are jumping to lots of conclusions about what this program means, what it will do, who it’s competing with, and what it will mean for advertisers, publishers, and arbitrageurs.

I was going to refrain from making a post about this until I had really digested it more and potentially even tried out the beta program if accepted, but since Pete Caputa somehow confused me for being smart, I’ll at least post a few thoughts.

CPA is harder on publishers
There’s no arguing that with CPA ads, publishers take all the risk. This is good for advertisers, and generally it’s harder on publishers. However, GOOD publishers who understand CPA, persuasion architecture, delivering users who will convert, and funneling your site correctly, can actually make more money from CPA then they would from CPC or even a flat CPM. Publishers who don’t understand these things and are used the normal Adsense model will most likely struggle to generate more money with this ad type because of the difference in how you monetize a user.

CPA is a different ball game
There is an assumption that this will be a major challenge to affiliate networks like Commission Junction and Linkshare. Maybe it will be, but I can say that these networks provide a lot of value because they help advertisers create the right kinds of creatives and really optimize CPA. How much advice is Google going to really give on setting everything up? How much human touch will they provide to this process? With Google’s program, if the advertiser’s landing page sucks will Google consult to help them improve it? Sure, they provide access to their Website Optimizer Tool, but those who have tried multi-variate testing know that isn’t just a cut and dry automated process like Google is trying to make all of this.

Will this hurt lead generation or affiliate arbitrage?
I’m not sure I care. Businesses need to provide value, and if Google just made it more efficient so that it’s harder to arbitrage stuff, so be it. I’m not necessarily against arbitrage, but you can’t expect companies to leave things inefficient. Arbitrageurs are always looking for an edge, and most likely they’ll still find one somehow and somewhere.

Overall thoughts
Until we see the program in action, see what advertisers succeed with it, and how publishers can work with it and what types of results they get it’s hard to predict what will happen. The general assumption is that since Google has dominated with Adwords/Adsense/CPC they will dominate CPA by adding it to the mix. Well, Google HAS NOT dominated CPM and display advertising when they added it to Adwords/Adsense. I don’t think it’s a given by any means that this will work as well, however I do give it a better shot. I think the CPA direct marketing advertisers are closer to being the same group that does well with CPC now, while flat CPM and display advertising tend to be a different type of advertiser. It will be interesting to watch.

Filed Under: Google
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